A manual review of Melissa Caddick’s mobile phone showed a “potential pin data point” on her Uber account at Sydney Airport at 12.45am on Friday 13 November, 2020, the inquest into her disappearance and presumed death has heard.
The inquest has previously heard that later that day Caddick’s husband Anthony Koletti, 40, reported his wife’s disappearance to the police. He said his wife had vanished in the early hours of the previous day, November 12, but gave three different times as to when he had last seen her.
Melissa Caddick disappeared on November 12, 2020.
Hours before her disappearance, Caddick’s Dover Heights home was raided by the Federal Police acting on behalf of the corporate regulator, ASIC, relating to a $23 million Ponzi scheme Caddick, 49, had been running since 2012. Most of her victims were family and friends.
Her right shoe, containing her partial remains, washed up on a remote beach on the NSW south coast in February 2021, three months after she was last seen.
Numerous inadequacies in the first week of the police investigation have been examined by counsel assisting the coroner, Jason Downing, SC.
When he took over the investigation on 23 November, Detective Sergeant Michael Foscholo said there were three options as to what had happened to Caddick.
The working theory was that Caddick was in hiding and that her husband “may have been withholding information and somehow assisting Melissa,” he said.
Another theory was that the missing fraudster had “plunged from the Dover Heights cliffs.“
The third option and the most “unlikely,” Foscholo said, was that Caddick had come to harm either at her husband’s hands or someone else’s.
Foscholo said he was aware that uniformed police had gone to Koletti’s house shortly after he reported his wife missing and there was nothing in the house that “would cause concern that a crime had been committed.“
A full crime scene investigation was not conducted until 19 days after Caddick’s disappearance, the inquest heard.
Senior Crime Scene Officer Ellen Konza, who conducted the crime scene investigation, said there was no evidence of blood or any evidence of a clean-up of blood in the Dover Heights home.
She also examined the Mercedes and Audi cars in the garage. There was no evidence of blood or that the cars had been cleaned recently.
Konza also said there were no signs of anyone “being forced into the vehicle against their will” or any damage within the house to suggest there had been a struggle.
Foscholo told the inquest that one of the first things he did was examine Caddick’s mobile phone.
Her husband told police that he believed his wife had disappeared around dawn on November 12 and that what had initially concerned him was that Caddick’s phone was still on the charger and that she never left home without her mobile phone.
The detective said there was evidence of use of her phone after her disappearance.
The inquest has heard that her husband used his wife’s phone to call the ASIC officer who had raided their house the previous day as well as to text their cleaner.
The detective also mentioned Caddick’s Uber account on her mobile phone showed potential activity at Sydney Airport at 12.45am on 13 November.
Foscholo is scheduled to give further evidence during the second week of the inquest.
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